Between their awesome collection of the COMPLETE ROCKETEER and now this, IDW is seriously winning points with me for not only presentation and packaging, but also the content they choose to release.

Dick Briefer's Frankenstein work from WW2 is right behind Eisner's The Spirit in terms of awesomeness and personal inspiration to illustrate. Briefer's Frankenstein is literally the world's first "Horror" or "Monster" comic series. There had been stand alone stories in other comics before, but Briefer took the Frankenstein Monster and turned it into a franchise. His art went from serious to cartoony to a hybrid of the 2 throughout the character's life from Prize Comics til the end of his own series. I like 'toon' influence in horror comics, so this is seriously like the Dead Sea Scrolls of monster comics to me.

If the impact Briefer made on horror comics wasn't nearly enough... he pulled a total golden age maneuver and sent Frankenstein to Germany to beat on some Nazis. Good times.

As much as my inner Batman fanboy wants to choke Kevin Smith for making such stupid decisions, I can't help but have fun reading his work. It's refreshing to read a story removed from continuity but also filled with so much Bat history and visual gags.

As many times as I rolled my eyes, I must admit the last page surprised me and now I'm stuck waiting for Volume 2.

Nextwave: Agents of HATE, Ultimate collection:I enjoyed this mindless action festival where a robot can be powered by the power of beer and solving society's issues with violence as we enjoy seeing a dragon with underpants getting beaten to senseless, hail Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen! Another fine chapter to the Neo Silver Age of comic books where things go wild and the world is grim and edgy! So edgy you get a devilious plan by the mystery villain who wants to annihilate all humans, gasp! The range of characters from the Captain to the European proud Elsa Bloodstone's whos European shirt certainly doesn't stand for America! Machine Man's dislike for puny fleshings can get abit forced at times, but ultimately the main character highlights do come from Dirk Anger's passion to capture the Nextwave as much as him wanting to kill himself. This comic heavily reminded me of Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy, while Ellis gets the boost of using the Marvel universe so we can have such great villains as the mighty Forbush man! The entire book might be 12 issues long, but the read thru goes incredibly swiftly with non-boring dialogue and the fact the scenarios are pretty intriquing itself, some jokes might feel forced such as Tabitha Smith's internet quotations from Zomg to other words, but she was pretty awesome with her superheroine name being Boom-Boom practically. Check it out, if you're a fan of good team ups and comedy.

Batman: Ego & Other Tails: It's pretty much a collection of all Batman related things Darwyn Cooke has written and drawn, starting with Ego which is pretty much Batman vs. Bruce Wayne and debating was it right to let Joker live and how much good and bad the whole Batman persona may have caused to Gotham as a whole. Selina's Big Score was incredibly enjoyable crime noir story that fleshed on her background before meeting Brucie, but overall the characters we're just those "1 story characters". It also collects some Black & White stories by Darwyn that we're also pretty enjoyable and it also has a very cute few page story of Batman and Catwoman drawn by Tim Sale. It's well written short stories at an incredible cheap price, check it out.

Daredevil by Frank Miller & Klaus Janson volumes 1-3:

Ah yeah now we're getting to the A-material right here, having already read Daredevil: Born Again and Daredevil: The Man Withouth Fear it was nice to finally read the actual first stories by Miller on DD that made him so popular to begin with. Volume 1 kicks off with the Spider-Man issues drawn by Miller and the first stories in volume 1 are actually written by Roger Mckenzie, but you can see the beginning of Miller's story telling artistic decisions, but the first issues just have too much that 70s style narration on almost everything, but nowhere near as bad as it is in Tomb of Dracula series. When Miller and Janson kick off their story arc with the introduction of Elektra, you can see this is Miller at his most Millerist there is. Stunning views of the city are drawn, beatiful women, people smoking, criminals scheming and plotting, with Kingpin getting very tons of attention as he is treated as *the* villain over the course of the story, you got Miller using his weird slang and honestly alot of the action scenes are pretty much the best i've seen from Miller. Elektra's introduction not only kicks off the new love interests for Matt, you also get to see Miller fleshing out not only Hell's Kitchen but Matt's own past gets fleshed out with the introduction of Stick, Daredevil losing his radar senses for a while, gosh you know i could just list all the things i overly enjoyed and loved on these 3 volumes. I mean the page count for each volume was close to 250 pages each, but i read these volumes in 2 days with such ease. Great dialogue, not too much Miller like narration (tho yes, we do get DD compare Hell Kitchen to a woman, and boy did i laugh), great villains such as Kirigi, 3 awesome fights between Daredevil and Bullseye along with Kingpin being the most ruthless cunning criminal lord there is, you also see Ben Urich and even Fogey standout as great citizens who stood up againts the corruption. Oh and Turk is obviously the greatest criminal Matt has ever faced!

If you're an obvious Miller fan, get it. If you love superhero vigilante comics that don't symbolize american politics like Miller's Batman always does, get it. Honestly this is flatout great vigilante superheroics. I guess i could just squeeze this fact in: the 3rd volume has bunch of short stories included after Miller's last DD issue which was flatout awesome, one last talk with Daredevil and his nemesis! So yeah the short stories are stuff like "what if DD was an agent of SHIELD" and a Kingpin centric story that deals with Kingpin and his wife Vanessa, but i gotta admit i felt underwhelmed by these short stories after being so much spoiled by the actual ongoings. I also gotta love how the whole japanese culture was used here with ninjas and all, since i also had hype backlash upon my experience with Miller's Ronin story.